This relates to electronic devices and, more particularly, to electronic devices with accessories such as earphones.
Accessories such as earphones are often used with media players, cellular telephones, and other electronic devices. Some accessories have microphones that are used to form part of a noise cancellation circuit. When noise cancellation functions are active, the impact of ambient noise on audio playback can be reduced. Microphones can also be used to implement voice microphone noise cancellation.
There can be difficulties associated with noise cancelling earphones. For example, a user who is using earphones to listen to audio while noise cancellation circuitry in the earphones is active may occasionally need to remove the earphones. When doing so, the user may not be able to manually turn off noise cancellation features. Actively running noise cancellation operations in an accessory when a user is not using the accessory increases power consumption and decreases the battery life of the accessory.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide improved ways in which to control operation of an electronic device coupled to an accessory such as noise cancelling earphones.